Van Marwijk will have a hard time deciding who should go

Monday 24 May 2010

After a week of relatively calm training sessions, Holland shifted gear yesterday with the first fired up training game of the campaign. Although it's too early for any conclusions some players were drawing attention to themselves.

It was a two hour training session yesterday with the injured Ryan Babel back on the pitch. The Liverpool forward trained apart from the rest of the squad after he skipped training on Saturday.

Van Marwijk let his team practice finishing yesterday with some fired up training games at the end. The coach made three teams of eight players that played a mini-tournament. It was the first time Van Marwijk tried his players in a match situation.

There was a worrisome moment when Ibrahim Afellay hurt his elbow, but after a few minutes of treatment he was able to resume.

What was most striking about the training matches was the sharpness of Dirk Kuyt. That's in itself nothing surprising, but the blonde forward may feel he has something to prove after Robin van Persie's remarks about his favorite lineup.

Besides Rafael van der Vaart, young AZ-forward (at PSV next season) Jeremain Lens did very well and earned himself a lot of compliments from his team mates. Lens had some fantastic moves and proved very steady on the ball. Besides Lens Afellay and Ajax-defender Gregory van der Wiel appeared very solid.

There were some harsh words from Van Marwijk for Hamburg-forward Eljero Elia after some sloppy play, but he improved later on. Robin van Persie seemed to play with the hand break on, but he was responsible for the best move of the day when made a chance with a fantastic pass for Stijn Schaars to score from.

All in all it's too early to comment on possible lineups or which players Van Marwijk will drop from the current squad of 27. Yet it was good to see that all players are willing to make it hard for the bondscoach to decide.